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edge of the existence of mind is reached by a process of inference, and there are persons who dispute its legitimacy. They tell us that, as physiology is advancing in its researches, mind is retiring farther and farther back; and not a few are cherishing the expectation that, in the course of time, they may be delivered from it altogether; and that they may account for every exercise of thought and feeling by mechanical and chemical processes, by electric and nervous agency. Now, I meet all these objections by denying that it is by any such lengthened or circuitous process that we come to discover the existence of mind. I affirm that we know mind, just as we know matter, directly and immediately.

We can, in a sense, experiment upon the mind, in order to discover its working. We set out from our dwelling into the heart of a pleasant scene of hills and vales, and trees and streams.

It is not by a perplexing process of reasoning that we believe this oak and that rock to exist: we have an intuitive and immediate knowledge of them by the senses. While we look at these objects, we are conscious that we do so; we are conscious, intuitively and immediately conscious, of a self different from the scene we are contemplating. While we behold the objects, we are led to form certain judgments regarding them: this hill is higher than this other hill; this tree is a pine and this other a maple; this stream is pure and flowing rapidly. While we thus judge and reason about these objects, we are conscious of a self that is doing so. While we are

CONSCIOUSNESS Of self.

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enjoying the scene, we see a company of children playing on the bank of the river, and they seem so happy that we rejoice in their joy, and are as conscious of our joy as we are of their existence. But, unexpectedly, two of the boys begin to quarrel; and the stronger knocks the other into the water, and the stream is bearing him along, apparently, to destruction. We are forthwith filled with horror and indignation at the deed; we feel ourselves reprobating the conduct of the violent youth; and, feeling pity for the boy who is sinking in the waters, we rush into the stream in the hope of rescuing him. We are as certain that there is a something perceiving the scene, as that there is a scene perceived; that there is a mind comparing the hills, trees, and streams, as that there are hills, trees, and streams to be compared; that there is a soul reprobating the passionate boy, as that there is a boy to be reprobated; that we have not more convincing evidence that there is a boy drowning in the river, than we have of the other fact that we are cherishing compassion towards him; and we are not more assured that the child is in danger, than we are that we have resolved to rescue him. And let us observe, carefully, how much is implied in what we have thus felt as passing through our minds : we are conscious of a self performing a great number and variety of acts, as perceiving, judging, reasoning, distinguishing between good and evil, as under the influence of deep emotion, as willing and fulfilling our determinations. It follows:

2.

That we have a positive though limited knowledge of mind, even as we have a positive though limited knowledge of body. There are eminent metaphysicians, among whom we may reckon Kant, who maintain that we can know nothing of matter, except that it exists: matter is described as the unknown something producing the impressions which we feel in our minds. Now, with all deference to the distinguished men who have held this dogma, I believe it to be utterly inconsistent with the intuitive declarations of consciousness. Man is possessed of a power or attribute, by which he knows, I believe, immediately, the objects by which he is surrounded. He knows matter as extended in length, breadth, and depth, and as exercising certain active properties, as moving or striking other objects, or as being repelled. In all this, it is true, he is far from knowing all about matter: matter may have properties which are latent, latent, inasmuch as we have never seen them exercised; or latent, inasmuch as we may never be able to discover them; but still he has a knowledge, limited, no doubt, but positive and trustworthy so far as it goes. I have referred to this error at the one extreme, only that I may be able the better to expose an error at the other extreme. A living writer says that the only method by which mind can be defined as a substance is, "by taking the realities of which we have experience, and abstracting one property after another, until we have an entity without extension, with

WE HAVE A KNOWLEDGE OF MIND. 105

out resistance, without parts, without divisibility," &c. Now, it appears to me, we might with as much propriety declare that we could not define matter except as an entity, without consciousness, without thought, without will. Just as we define matter by positives as extended, as possessed of attraction and other properties; so we may define mind by positive qualities, all of them known to us, because we have constant experience of them. We may define it as possessing consciousness, intelligence, conscience, emotion, will. The fact is, that, being immediately conscious of mind and its varied actings from hour to hour, and minute to minute, we know more of mind than we know of matter. True, we do not possess a perfect knowledge of man's mental, any more than of his corporeal, nature. We do not know and cannot be expected to know it, as the God who made it knows it still we have in consciousness a means, and this an immediate means, of knowing so much. of its nature and properties, as thinking, feeling, desiring, willing.

3. As matter cannot be resolved into mind on the one hand, so mind cannot be resolved into matter on the other. There have been attempts made by ingenious metaphysicians, as by Bishop Berkeley and by Fichte, so to refine matter as to leave little but the name: it is represented either as an idea created by the Divine Mind, to be viewed by the created mind, or as a projection of the human mind itself. There is also a school of physical

speculators in the present day, who are seeking to spiritualize matter by stripping it of some of its distinguishing properties, such as its extension or its occupation of space. With them matter is merely a name for certain powers, mechanical, chemical, or electric, which are supposed to produce all the phenomena falling under the senses. This refined view of body, though supported by names of repute, seems to be inconsistent with that immediate and intuitive knowledge which we possess of it, as not only exercising dynamical powers, but as extended and solid. But while opposing all attempts to resolve matter into mind, I would also set myself against the attempt to resolve mind into matter. By our primitive cognitions, we know matter as extended, solid, divisible, and exercising such qualities as attraction and repulsion; but we also know self as perceiving, judging, reasoning, devising, hating, fearing, loving.

To those who would aver that mind may be merely a' modification of matter, I reply, first, that the two are made known to us by different organs: we know the one, matter, by the senses; we know the other, mind, by self-consciousness. No man ever saw a thought, touched an emotion, or heard a volition. Nor are we conscious, within the thinking mind, of space occupied, or hardness, or color. We reply, secondly, and more particularly, that we know them as possessed of essentially different properties: we know the one as occupying space and exercising certain attractive powers; whereas we know the other

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